Says: “Time To Put The Interests Of Middle Class Nevadans Ahead Of The Wall Street Billionaires”

Las Vegas- Congresswoman Shelley Berkley issued the following statement regarding the decision by President Obama to use a recess appointment to install Richard Cordray as Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency:

“With our economy struggling to recover, Nevada's middle class families cannot afford for Dean Heller and his fellow Washington Republicans to continue blocking the new Wall Street Watch Dog Agency from holding the big banks accountable. It's long past time to put the interests of middle class Nevadans ahead of the Wall Street billionaires and install a new Director at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.”

KEY POINT: For example, critics say the consumer bureau somehow isn't accountable and can do whatever it likes. In fact, it's the only banking regulator whose rules can be vetoed by the Financial Stability Oversight Council, a group of the government's top financial regulators. Critics insist it's dangerous and unusual that the consumer bureau is run by a single director instead of a multimember commission, but that's how the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, a key bank regulator, has operated since 1863. Commissions are more easily hobbled by members who seek to undermine them.

The solution, the GOP senators say, is to make the bureau more accountable to Congress. Quick now: Everyone who trusts members of Congress to write rules, with little public scrutiny, that are disliked by the institutions that fund their campaigns, raise your hands. Those would be the same institutions that want the agency weakened.

The consumer bureau, created in the wake of the economic devastation of 2008, is a central part of reforms designed to rein in the bad actors who caused so much misery by writing bad mortgages, creating exotic and dangerous financial products, and otherwise preying on the public. It is specifically charged with preventing financial institutions from marketing deceptive products and forcing them to clearly explain the loans, credit cards, mortgages and other products they do offer.

Given the misery the country has suffered from the government's failure to monitor such practices, it seems a sensible addition. But it is one of the agencies Republicans in Congress most love to hate. They fought its creation, and having lost they've made every effort to hobble it. Today, they are expected to reject President Obama's nominee to head the agency, not because he is objectionable but because the agency is. So they want to starve it, along with other elements of financial reform. "The less we fund those agencies, the better America will be," Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell declared in June.

While GOP critics say soothingly that they're merely trying to make the consumer agency more accountable, they clearly aim to undercut it.

For example, critics say the consumer bureau somehow isn't accountable and can do whatever it likes. In fact, it's the only banking regulator whose rules can be vetoed by the Financial Stability Oversight Council, a group of the government's top financial regulators. Critics insist it's dangerous and unusual that the consumer bureau is run by a single director instead of a multimember commission, but that's how the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, a key bank regulator, has operated since 1863. Commissions are more easily hobbled by members who seek to undermine them.

The solution, the GOP senators say, is to make the bureau more accountable to Congress. Quick now: Everyone who trusts members of Congress to write rules, with little public scrutiny, that are disliked by the institutions that fund their campaigns, raise your hands. Those would be the same institutions that want the agency weakened.

No hands? Didn't think so.

The new agency won't be toothless if the Senate fails to confirm its director. It can already regulate the way banks deal with consumers, and in the five months since it opened, the bureau has worked to create simplified new information for mortgages, student loans and credit cards so consumers know what they're signing up for.

But without a director, the bureau can't regulate financial institutions such as the non-bank mortgage lenders that contributed to the financial crisis, or payday lenders who lure desperate borrowers into exorbitantly priced loans that can trap them forever.

That would be a shame. Lawmakers should be wary of too much regulation, but if they ignore the need for reasonable restrictions they risk letting the nation get burned all over again.